The Farewell (2019) poster
2019 · drama · comedy

The Farewell

Directed by Lulu Wang1h 40m2019
ElsewhereIMDb7.573kRT97%Metacritic89TMDB7.42k
  • tender
Movie DNA

Neutral, steady, gentle drama / comedy, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, tender, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

A headstrong Chinese-American woman returns to China when her beloved grandmother is given a terminal diagnosis. Billi struggles with her family's decision to keep grandma in the dark about her own illness as they all stage an impromptu wedding to see grandma one last time.

Our read · The Farewell (2019) reads as a neutral, steady, grounded drama · comedy entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, tender in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of The Farewell

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a tender family goodbye about culture, grief, and loving white lies.

ends bittersweetit stays with youa slow buildgrips by minute 8attention 4/5earns its lengthsubtitles: partial
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if you need fast plot or cannot sit through subtitled family conversations.

If The Farewell is your film
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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